The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To MARION ELY,1 16 JANUARY 1854
Extract and summary in Bonham’s catalogue, 23 March 2004; MS 2 pp.; addressed Marion Ely; dated Tavistock House, 16 January 1854.
...I have an engagement of some standing, for Wednesday, to take an American from New York2 – a brother in law of Jeffrey’s3 who has a strong claim to my attention – to see all manner of sights, winding up with the Ice at the Adelphi4....While his sister-in-law Georgina and the tall nieces5 are going with his son Charley6 to their grandmother’s7...the great occasion being a kind of farewell banquet (leg of mutton) previous to Charley’s return to Germany...So we are all unavailable and inconsolable....To let you into a dreadful secret which I am afraid to whisper to the winds; I am more than doubtful of Mr. Robson’s8 advancing beyond his present point in his profession. I went, with the strongest disposition to be pleased, to see him do that serious part in Plot and Passion.9 And I thought it a very poor piece of violent patchwork,10 with the worst conventionalities of the commonest theatres in it....Don’t hate me if you can help it, for I always heartily admire you in everything.
- 1. Marion Elizabeth Ely (1820-1913), daughter of Charles Ely and Sara, née Rutt; niece of Rachel Talfourd (1792-1875), wife of CD's friend Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854).
- 2. Dr George Wilkes, brother of Mrs David Colden (née Frances Wilkes, b. ?1796); both had been important friends during CD’s 1842 visit to the United States. Dr Wilkes and Mrs Colden (her husband died in 1850) were visiting Europe.
- 3. Frances Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850; Dictionary of National Biography: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 479n), had married Charlotte Wilkes (d. May 1850), sister of Dr Wilkes and Mrs Colden.
- 4. A spectacular scene in Thirst of Gold; or The Lost Ship and the Wild Flower of Mexico, adapted from the French by Benjamin Webster. A captain, cast adrift with wife, young daughter and a faithful seaman, takes refuge on a sheet of ice, “the dissolution of which is hourly expected”. As the ice breaks up, captain, wife and seaman sink from sight, “and presently the whole stage is an expanse of water, the only ice left being a single small block”, on which the captain’s daughter “floats along, singing a prayer which she was taught by her mother.” The scene, a hit in Paris, at the Adelphi was so well contrived that “the conversion of the sheet of ice into the undulating waters...is likely to be...one of the ‘sights’ of the town” (The Times, 6 Dec 53). The downside was that the performance lasted four hours, with the Christmas magic spectacle to follow.
- 5. Georgina Hogarth (1827-1917); Mamie and Katey, Georgina’s nieces.
- 6. Charles Dickens Jnr, CD's eldest child. After leaving Eton, Dec 52, Charley went to Leipzig for most of 1853 to learn German, returning for Christmas. CD had a long discussion with him about his future (To Coutts, 14 Jan 54), before he returned to Leipzig to consolidate his German.
- 7. Mrs George Hogarth (née Georgina Thomson), 1793-1863.
- 8. Thomas Frederick Robson, originally Brownbill (?1822-64; Dictionary of National Biography), actor and manager; made his reputation in comedy, farce and especially burlesque. Joint manager of the Olympic theatre, 1857, where he produced professionally Wilkie Collins’s The Lighthouse, taking CD’s role of Aaron Gurnock: see further Pilgrim Letters 8, pp. 394, 418 & nn. Because of his small figure, became known as “the great little Robson”.
- 9. By Tom Taylor, at the Olympic Theatre, Wych Street, Strand; Robson played Desmarets. Though CD had earlier been pleased by a report of Robson’s success in the part, “as I hope he will now be a fine actor” (To Mrs CD, 28 & 29 Oct 53; Pilgrim Letters , p. 179), he had formed his own opinion since his return to England in mid Dec 53.
- 10. Desmarets is an agent of Fouché, Minister of Police, “an abject creature...the very perfection of diminutive meanness”. CD disagreed with The Times, which praising Robson for “the richness of colouring with which he fills up his details”, declared his acting “the central point of interest in a play which often borders on the dull” (18 Oct 53).